The Past-Life Chronicles Box Set: Volume 1 & 2: Duet Omnibus Edition

by C. K. Brooke

  I swallow to quell my thumping heart. Could this really be…?

  “I’m Mason.” Mason thinks fast, holding out a hand. “This is my sister, Willow, and our brother, Henry.” He nods at us to play along, and we bob our heads emphatically. The old woman shakes his hand.

  “We’ve been, uh, doing some genealogy research.” Henry clears his throat. “We believe we may be…uh, distantly related to Raymond Sanderson. You said he was your first husband?”

  Good thinking, guys. Meanwhile, I remain tongue-tied. Like a deer caught in the headlights, here I stand, staring down my killer.

  Her?

  “Well, I’ll be.” The former Mrs. Sanderson scratches her wiry head. “Well, come on in, now, outta the downpour. Don’t want y’all catchin’ no chill.” She beckons us inside, wheeling herself back to make room. We oblige, and her caretaker closes the door against a gust of wind.

  Inside is warm—almost hot—although the old woman wears a long-sleeved cardigan over her housedress, and wool socks that rise up her calves. “Pearl, fix up some hot cider. I b’lieve we still got a carton in the fridge.”

  Henry passes me, gaping between the photographs on the walls as we follow the woman into a small sitting room.

  “Sit,” she implores us, when we only remain standing. Tentatively, Mason and I lower onto a stiff pink loveseat together.

  Henry, on the other hand, descends to one knee, as if to propose. Gingerly, he reaches for her liver-spotted hand. “You’re Joy,” he utters. “Right?”

  “Joyful as I’ll ever be.” She clucks with a little laugh and pats his hand firmly between hers. “Now, you’re related to Ray, you say? No wonder ya seem so familiar. You especially,” she nods at Henry. “You got his smile.”

  Color flushes Henry’s face as she releases his hand. He gets to his feet as the caregiver returns with a tray of mugs. She hands one to each of us, and I’m grateful to at least have something warm between my hands.

  “Willow,” Mason mutters from the side of his mouth. “If you don’t stop jiggling your knee, I’m going to spill my drink where it counts.”

  I realize he’s cradling his mug over his crotch, and I’m pretty sure my cheeks turn as pink as this sofa. I make a concerted effort to stop the leg-hopping, but now my anxious energy has no outlet.

  Henry seats himself in an armchair near Joy.

  “So. What would you like to know about Ray? I can tell you ever’thing I remember. And I’ve got me a good memory left over.” Joy taps her index finger to her forehead.

  “What did he do for a living?” I blurt. He was persuasive, I remember. He hustled, didn’t he? A smooth-talking—

  “Sold appliances.” Joy folds her hands in her lap. “Over at the big department store, long before it closed. If you kids even remember department stores.” She wheezes, and I’m not sure if it was meant to be a laugh. “I reckon Ray sold everyone in Elms Creek their stoves and fridges…” She clears her throat with a cough, but when she speaks again, her voice only sounds more gravelly. “Poor man never did wanna die a salesman. Always wanted to be a doctor, in fact.”

  My eyes widen.

  “He had to put that dream to pasture once the babies came along.” She indicates an end table by the window where, in round silver frames, are what look like Polaroid photographs of three rosy-cheeked children with chestnut-brown hair. Two boys and a girl.

  My pulse is knocking like an invader through my veins. Silently, Henry rises and drifts toward them. Meanwhile, my brain is stuck on Joy’s words, struggling to process them and my cavalcade of emotions at the same time. Babies…

  What about our baby?

  I look back at Joy, her aged face, her immobile legs. Does she realize all she took from Ray, from me?

  “Wish I had a picture of Ray on-hand for you. The kids took most of ’em when they moved. Wanted some mementoes of their father, I s’pose. All three of ’em in different states now.” She rubs her dress slowly over her knees. “I keep my photo albums down in the cellar. That way, were there ever a tornad’uh, it could wipe me out but not my mem’ries. Unfortunately, though…can’t get myself down there these days.”

  “It’s okay,” I assure her. “We know what he looks like.” The memory is too fresh, too raw, after all, of those broad shoulders and ensnaring dark eyes… Not to mention, his latest incarnation is standing right in front of me, examining the photographs of his former children with almost tangible nostalgia.

  “You do?” Joy’s brow folds.

  “We found pictures on the Internet,” Mason lies quickly.

  “Huh.” Joy looks stumped. “Never did get the hang of those inter-webs.”

  Henry lifts the silver frame containing the photo of a little girl. He angles his body away, facing the window, so I can’t see his expression. All I know is that he stands there, staring down at it for a long time.

  Beside me, Mason sips his cider. I don’t; I’m not entirely convinced mine isn’t poisoned.

  “Well, then, you’ve probably read on-the-line that Ray died ’bout twenty-five years ago,” says Joy. At this, Henry looks up. “Cancer.” She sighs. “Then I married Bobby Stone, and he died too, in a boating accident, two days after our third anniversary. Last, I married a man called Joe Fairlane, and he was a mean drunk I was happy to get away from. Though, not before losin’ my legs, thanks to him.”

  Her lips bow down, and if I wasn’t watching her so closely, I might’ve missed the slight quiver in her chin. She’s quick to mask it, of course. Joy is tough—always has been. She was, perhaps, the only woman who could put a man like Ray Sanderson on a leash.

  Somewhere in the depths of my subconscious, I recall more. Back then, Joy hadn’t seemed to care whether Ray had wanted her or not; all that had mattered to her was that she’d wanted him. And she never let anything keep her from what she wanted.

  Henry’s voice interrupts my recollection. “What did he do to you?” He examines Joy, almost protectively.

  She barks out a laugh, but it’s entirely mirthless. “Bastard shot me in the back. Didn’t kill me!” She folds her arms, as if proud of her survival. But the pride quickly fades. “Even so, I haven’t walked in thirteen years, and never will again.”

  Sympathy pinches me in spite of myself, while Henry’s brow furrows. Next to me, Mason looks down into his mug.

  Joy sniffles a little, till Pearl comes shuffling in. “Oh, Mrs. Bernard.” I can’t tell whether she’s scolding or soothing her. “Your guests didn’t come to hear all that.”

  “It’s my sob story; I can tell it if I want to,” snaps Joy.

  Pearl looks between us with an apologetic half-smile. “Sorry. She’s not used to visitors—we don’t get very many. And perhaps that memory of hers is too good.” She lifts a teasing eyebrow at her patient. “Maybe it would be better to start forgetting?”

  Joy waves her off, impatient. “Go an’ see if we’ve got any more o’ them lemon coolers in the cabinet.”

  I shake my head at the caregiver. “No, really. You don’t have to—”

  “I’ll be right back.” Pearl cuts me off with a grin.

  Henry sets the photograph carefully upon the end table. “Would it be all right if I used your restroom?” he asks.

  “Well sure, honey, it’s up the hall—”

  “Second door behind the kitchen,” murmurs Henry.

  “What was that now?”

  “Nothing.” I can see him chew the inside of his cheek. “Sorry.”

  “Second door behind the kitchen,” Joy informs him.

  The fine hairs on my neck stand on end. I scoot closer to Mason. The longer we stay here, the more Henry’s behavior is creeping me out.

  Pearl returns with cookies caked in powdered sugar. They’re piled over a paper doily on chipped china that has to be older than my grandmother. She offers the dish to me, then to Mason. We each take a cookie, if only to be polite.

  Powder dusts my fingers and I take a bite. Sour lemon zings to life in my mouth, instanta
neously sweetened by the generous coating of sugar. I wash it down with a gulp of warm cider, and realize how much it tastes like home. Not Elms Creek-home, but Middling-home—two worlds, not so far apart, somehow colliding in a single sip.

  I must not have wanted to go far. I must have been serious about finishing my unfinished business. My brain buzzes with speculation. Same with Henry…

  I eye my killer—now just a little old, wheelchair-bound woman, feeding me cookies and cider like I’m her favorite grandniece. It feels wacked out, yet strangely pitiful at the same time. For, Joy might’ve stolen my life, and what should’ve been my future and family… yet, where’s her family now? Two husbands, dead; the third clearly having battered her—even attempted to destroy her. Shot in the back by one’s own spouse… And I thought I’d been betrayed. But now that I know the truth about Ray…

  In Joy’s shoes, maybe I’d have chosen death. Death over being haunted forever by the trauma of domestic violence, my fate and body permanently affected by what someone else had done to me, in this life…

  But death had been no escape for Susan. Because here I am again. Still dealing with it. Still trying to sort through the broken pieces I never had a chance to put back together from my previous, untimely demise.

  Joy’s features shift, and it seems as though her mind, too, is drifting into thought. She gazes out the window at the dreary afternoon. And I notice, in the rainy shadows, just how small, frail, and alone she appears.

  Her caregiver had made it plain enough that no one visits…not even Joy’s children, apparently. Hadn’t she said they’d all moved to different states? They must know their mother can’t travel to them, yet it’s clear they haven’t been here in a while. All she has are old photographs from when they were kids. Where are all the recent ones of them, grown with their families? Do they send her any? Do they keep in touch with their mother at all?

  I think of my mom and my sister, Heather. Joy wears the same resigned look in her eyes that I’ve seen in my mother’s countless times, when another Mother’s Day or Thanksgiving or Yule passes without any word from her oldest daughter. It seems Joy’s been abandoned by everyone she’s ever loved, whether by death or betrayal, or simply neglect. Even by Ray, her first husband, the father of her children. If what Henry told me was true, then even he’d been planning to leave her for someone else. For me.

  I may have carried his first child, but he’d been this woman’s fiancé first. Maybe, to some extent, her jealousy, her rage at his faithlessness, and in my role in it, could be understood. She’d known he was about to run off with me. Which also meant that, even when he married her, she must’ve known she was his second choice…his last resort.

  I know what that feels like. I’d left my last life believing that the man I loved, whose child I carried, wasn’t coming for me after all. That our plan was a lie, and he was only trying to get rid of me—to get me out of town or worse, to off me. Now I know it isn’t true. It wasn’t Ray’s fault. And Henry hadn’t come back to be with Joy. No…he came back to be with me.

  As if my thoughts have summoned him, my stepbrother appears, making his way back to us. He doesn’t resume the chair, however. He looks spent, as if he’s pulled an all-nighter studying within the course of the last ten minutes.

  “Mrs. Bernard,” he inclines his head, “we appreciate your hospitality. Thank you for inviting us inside. We have a lot of traveling ahead of us…”

  Joy’s face falls, then her eyes harden. “You’re leavin’ already? You just got here!”

  “Mrs. Bernard,” Pearl chides her from the kitchen. “You can’t hold them prisoner.”

  “This one didn’t get any lemon coolers,” complains Joy, jabbing a finger in Henry’s direction.

  Pearl bustles back to us. She takes the mugs from Mason and me with a wink. “They’ve gotta get goin’ before the storm picks up.”

  “It’s already pickin’ up.” Joy pouts.

  Pearl positions herself behind the wheelchair, but the old woman swats her hands away. “I can do it myself,” she huffs. “Lord knows, I’ve been doin’ it for thirteen years.”

  The caregiver relents, and Joy wheels herself forward. I swallow the rest of my cookie and brush the powdered sugar onto my jeans. Pearl chats with Henry and Mason as she escorts them up the hallway, asking where they’re from and how exactly we’re related to Joy’s first husband.

  I remain behind as Joy labors forward, catching flickers in my mind of a pretty, brown-haired woman, late twenties, wearing a red-and-black checkered blouse and fitted black skirt…

  And then it hits me. “Joy Carroll,” I say, the recollection flowing like water from my mouth.

  She halts in her efforts to wheel the chair.

  “That was your maiden name. Right?”

  She nods.

  “I remember you,” I whisper, then shake my head. “She remembers you.”

  Joy squints. I can tell she thinks she’s struggling to hear me. But I can also tell she heard me just fine.

  “Willow?” Mason calls from the front door.

  “Just a second,” I reply.

  Joy watches intently as I kneel before her, bringing my gaze level with hers. “I have a message for you.”

  “A message, you said?”

  “Yes. From Susan.”

  Her head moves from side to side, as if still not trusting her ears. “I don’t know any Susan.”

  I feel my lip curve. “Come on. You said your memory was sharp. Susan Dochy. Sound familiar?”

  There’s a certain bolt of recognition in her pale brown eyes. They flit between each of mine, at first accusing, then almost fearful, before they simply enlarge with shock.

  My heart pounds. She should’ve been brought to justice a long time ago. It may have been her brother’s hand that cut the wires, but she’d been the one who called the shots.

  The shots…

  My resolve wavers as I survey her in her wheelchair. She may never have been convicted for her crime, but it appears she has gotten her comeuppance—in a way I wouldn’t have wished upon anyone. Not even the person who’d gotten away with my murder.

  I guess karma can be a bitch.

  I inhale, steadying my voice for fear it might quaver, and utter decidedly, “Susan says she’s moving on.”

  All the color drains from her face. She gazes at me without speaking as I rise and depart the sitting room.

  As I rejoin Mason and Henry, who are waiting for me by the door, I hear Pearl ask Joy, “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine!” comes the old woman’s quip, her voice sounding husky with congestion. “Just got somethin’ in my damn eye.”

  17

  “I can’t believe people actually thought this was cool.” Henry reaches into my bag of Chex Mix, eyes glued to the TV. “The background looks like it’s made from cardboard.” He speaks through a full mouth. “Like the set of a high school play.”

  I snigger, turning up the volume with the remote. “Wait—this is my favorite part.”

  “Why are they ice skating?” demands Mason, who’s been laughing through the entire video. “I thought they were zombies.”

  “You know, this would actually be a good song,” Henry’s arm bumps mine as he reaches for more, “if the video wasn’t so ridiculous.”

  “You’re eating all my Chex Mix,” I complain.

  “Video did kill the radio star.” Mason winks, tossing Henry a bag of pretzels.

  Henry snorts. “I wonder if they’ll play that one.”

  “Dude, I hope so.” I prop up my back against the headboard, legs crossed in front of me. Henry and I are on his bed, Mason on his own beside us, eating junk food from the hotel vending machine and watching an eighties music video marathon. It’s literally the only thing on TV. A thunderstorm of epic proportions hit as soon as we were leaving Joy’s house earlier, and with nowhere else to go, we’ve stayed holed up in our hotel room since.

  “I’m going to burst into the operating room
and sing this to you,” I tease my stepbrother. “Doctor, doctor…!”

  “Oh, my God.” Henry covers his ears. “Willow, you can’t sing.” I belt out the next line of the Thompson Twins’ song, until he insists, “You’re making me want to drop out of med school.”

  “Shut up.” I’m giggling, but my face is hot. “That was so good, Mason wants me to accompany him on his guitar. Right, Mason?”

  “We’ll sell out Madison Square Garden.” Mason pours a helping of Jujubes into his mouth. “Yes,” he adds, enthusiastic when the next video begins.

  “Okay, I’ve always liked this song.” Henry pulls open the pretzel bag. “But I had no idea it was about a kid and his…teddy bear?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was supposed to be a love song.” I’m equally confused—and amused—as REO Speedwagon performs “Can’t Fight This Feeling”.

  “Who knew what these guys were on back then?” Mason grins.

  We fall silent, listening to the song, and sniggering occasionally at the cheesy video accompanying it. I glance between Mason and my stepbrother. For the first time, are the three of us actually just hanging out as normal young people…as friends?

  I wonder why it can’t always be like this. Expectations of the past—and the future—have always seemed to get in the way. But at least for the moment, I don’t sense the usual tension between us, and that makes me relax more than I have before, around either of them.

  Maybe we don’t always have to look back.

  Maybe we don’t always have to look ahead, either.

  #

  On Sunday, I drove part of the way home. Part, not all. I did drive my equal share. And I did manage without incident.

  I won’t say the phobia’s completely gone. It still nags in the back of my mind. But it’s more subdued. At any rate, it’s not debilitating anymore. At least it wasn’t yesterday. We’ll see if it comes back, if anything returns to the way it used to be. Before Susan’s grave, before the bridge at the Punitaw Reservoir, before visiting Joy…